Public Bill Committee

[Mr. Eric Illsleyin the Chair]

Eric Illsley: I remind Committee members and witnesses that today’s oral evidence session must stay within the scope of the UK Borders Bill. Please try to keep questions and answers concise and in order. This evidence session will last until 11.30 am, at which point I am required to end it. I apologise to whoever is speaking then, as I will be required to interrupt them.
Members of the Committee should be aware that we are using brief No. 2 for guidance. It is available in the Committee room should hon. Members require it. We shall proceed as we have in previous sittings, withhon. Members catching my eye if they wish to ask a question. Hon. Members and witnesses should remain seated during the evidence session, as we are using the desk microphones.
I welcome the witnesses from Migrationwatch UK: Sir Andrew Green, the chairman, Mr. Andrew Dennis, the head of research, and Mr. Richard Norman, executive member. Thank you for coming along to give evidence this morning, gentlemen.

Q 317317

Damian Green: One purpose of the Bill is to reduce the amount of illegal immigration into this country. To help put that in context, how big a problem do you see illegal immigration as being? Is it getting worse?

Sir Andrew Green:   It is a very substantial problem and a continuing one. One Government estimate of illegals contained a central estimate of 470,000, which was three or four years out of date when published. We adjusted it to take account of a substantial number of failed asylum seekers in the interim and came up with the somewhat larger figure of 670,000 as a central estimate.
The key point is that the problem will continue.Even if you deal with the existing illegal immigrantsin whatever way—I will come back to that if I may—other people will come to this country ready and willing to work for a fiver an hour and send home what are substantial amounts of money by their own standards. On that point, I should like to pick up on some evidence that was offered to the Committee in an earlier evidence session by the TGWU, which argued for a phased system of legalising undocumented workers. It did not like the word “amnesty”, perhaps because it was a little too close to the truth.
We are strongly opposed to any such idea, for three very strong reasons. First, it is wrong in principle to reward illegal behaviour. The illegal immigrants to whom Mr. Damian Green referred are not innocents abroad. They knowingly enter or remain in Britain illegally; they have been undercutting British workers, and they have helped unscrupulous employers to compete with honest employers.
 Secondly, an amnesty, by whatever name, is extremely expensive for the taxpayer. The Institute for Public Policy Research, which I think also gave evidence, claimed in a paper dated March 2006 that making illegal immigrants regular would “net”—note that word—the Treasury around £1 billion a year. Apart from being a shaky calculation, it was not honest, as it deliberately took no account of the extra cost to the Treasury of admitting 500,000 people to the welfare system. Our calculation, which corrects that, suggests that the additional cost to the Treasury would be £500 million or possibly £1,000 million, although I recognise that those calculations are very general.
A further important point never mentioned is that if we legalise illegal immigrants they immediately become entitled to social housing. They also become entitled to bring over their relatives, which will move them up the housing list. This brilliant idea would therefore add 500,000 to the housing list at a time when we have already given asylum or exceptional leave to remain to more people than we have built social housing for. Itis an extremely serious issue and I hope that the Committee will bear it well in mind.
My third reason is that they will be replaced. It is elementary that we should examine the experience of other countries. The Italians have given five amnesties in the past 20 years. The Spanish have given six.On virtually every occasion, there have been more applicants than at the previous amnesty, for the obvious reason that the word gets out: “Get there, stick around for a while and you will be legalised.” As a reward for his illegal entry and working in Britain, you are giving someone a meal ticket for life, free education, free health and free housing, so why would they not come to Britain? Let us look at Spain and what has happened to the territories in north Africa and the islands of the Atlantic. They are overwhelmed with illegal immigrants. The point is so clear that there can be only one policy.
I am delighted that the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality announced two or three days ago a clear and firm policy that the only way to go is to tighten up on illegal immigrants until it is no longer worth their while to stay. I suggest that the Minister considers a free exit policy. At the moment, if a person is arrested leaving the country, having been illegal, there is a risk that he will be put in jail at our expense for a year or so. I see no reason why we should not at the appropriate time say, “Okay, you can go. We won’t arrest you on your way out.” A time limit might have to be put on that, but it seems an entirely sensible way to proceed.

Q 318

Damian Green: Clauses 28 to 35 of the Bill come under the general heading “Automatic deportation”, a phrase over which I and others have cast doubt. What is your assessment of that? Do you think that the deportation procedures under the clauses would be adequate for the purpose of getting rid of people who should not be in this country?

Sir Andrew Green:   There will be no adequate means of deportation until we look again at the European convention on human rights. An immigration system is only as good as your ability to remove. The ECHR is a major obstacle. The refugee convention is not. As you know, it contains a let-out for serious offenders.The ECHR, particularly article 3 on torture and the well-known Chahal case that internationalises it, is a serious obstacle.
I should like to suggest some new thinking. Everybody in Britain is opposed to torture. It is out of the question. Everyone is deeply reluctant to send someone to a country where they might be tortured. That is common ground. But we must recognise that the present situation is actually a focus of attraction for people who have either committed a serious offence or intend to; I am thinking particularly of terrorism.

Eric Illsley: Sir Andrew, I want to stop you there. I ask witnesses only to respond to questions from the body of the Committee.

Sir Andrew Green:   I think that that was a response. I promise to keep my responses shorter, but two major issues have been raised and they are central to the effectiveness of the Bill as a whole. May I continue for one minute? I am in your hands.

Eric Illsley: Briefly.

Sir Andrew Green:   I suggest that we withdrawfrom the ECHR—we can do that after six months’ notice—and make a public statement to the effect that as from that date of withdrawal anyone convicted of a terrorist offence in Britain will be sent home with only a non-suspensive appeal. To anyone who says that that is terrible, the answer is, “You have brought it on yourselves. You were warned. If you come to Britain and conduct terrorist offences, you will be sent home.”

Q 319

Liam Byrne: I was very interested,Sir Andrew, in what you were saying about illegal working in particular. Some of the evidence that we heard in the initial evidence sessions concerned a number of perspectives that echoed that. People felt that illegal working was one of the principal drivers of illegal immigration. Front-line immigration officers have said to me that when they come across people, they very rarely find them accessing benefits but often find them working illegally. I am interested in your perspective on how significant illegal working is as a pull factor for illegal immigrants.

Sir Andrew Green: I think that it is a very important pull factor and also an incentive for people to stay on illegally, which is another form of the same thing. There is no question about its importance. I would also add that the ease of getting away with it is another pull factor. The Bill addresses many of the issues. It is an excellent Bill and we are very supportive of it.

Q 320

Liam Byrne: I was struck by some of the evidence that was given by National Car Parks, which is a business that takes its corporate reputation very seriously. The Home Office is indebted to it because of its pioneering work in developing different ways of identifying whether people are here illegally or not.
In his evidence, the director of risk management from National Car Parks called ID cards a very significant step forward. From National Car Parks’ point of view, it found that understanding the validity of 50 or 60 different bits of paper proffered by wayof evidence was expensive and not very reliable. An important part of the Bill is the introduction of compulsory ID cards for foreign nationals to help prove entitlement to work and public benefits. Do you think that that would make any difference to some of these issues?

Sir Andrew Green:   Yes, it certainly would. We support that. As you probably know, the guidance to employers at the moment runs to 17 pages. It is really not reasonable to expect an employer to look at a document and go through 17 pages of guidance.So, yes, we believe that those ID cards will help substantially. Added to that, I think that the real penalty has to be on the employer. There is no point in trying to fine an illegal immigrant; he has not got any money. I have lost count of the number of magistrates who have expressed their concern on that point. A lot of people come before the courts for various offences and there is nothing that can be done about them. There is no room in the jails and they have no money to pay a fine. If what this leads to is a lot of impoverished people in front of the magistrates there is no point. If it leads to companies being fined £20,000 and company directors going to jail, then you are getting serious, and it is high time we did, in my view.

Q 321

James Clappison: Sir Andrew, I believe that I am right in saying that your organisation warned of the problems over deportation that the Government encountered last May and June a little while before those problems arose. It appears to me from the House of Commons Library briefing that you were anticipating the reform of the law and deportation last January.

Sir Andrew Green  indicated assent.

Q 322

James Clappison: One of the points that you made in your proposals for reform was that the approach taken towards offenders who are illegally in the country as opposed to those with legal permission should be stronger than is reflected in the present Bill; is that right?

Sir Andrew Green: We would be happy with as strong a process as the House of Commons can agree to. There are very serious issues both of fact and of public opinion here. As regards being in advance of the Government, I think that we have been about five years in advance of them on most issues for the past five years, with respect, Mr. Illsley.

Q 323

James Clappison: You would draw a distinction when dealing with offenders, between offenders with legal permission to be in the country and the illegal migrants, who we were talking about a few minutes ago.

Sir Andrew Green:   Absolutely. If they commit offences here, then they should be prioritised for removal.

Q 324

James Clappison: I believe, from the Library paper, that you also want a tougher regime to deal with repeat offences in the country. As the Bill stands, what is described as automatic deportation would only apply  to people who commit offences that result in a sentence of 12 months imprisonment, which leaves the prospect of somebody committing repeated offences and receiving shorter sentences of imprisonment, as, for example, from a magistrates court, where someone can only get a sentence of six months imprisonment. Is that right?

Sir Andrew Green:   Yes, it is. I think that you have had some earlier discussion of this. That point needs to be looked at seriously. At the moment the position would be as you describe. There could be a whole series of offences and the guy is still here. That is not amusing for the public. If you want to rebuild public confidence in the immigration system, which certainly needs to be done, then that is one aspect that needs attention. It would be helpful if in some way the offences could be added together, so that on a second offence—certainly a third—they would be removed anyway.

Q 325

Iain Wright: Sir Andrew, I was interested in what you were saying earlier, particularly in response to the Minister’s question. Last week I was reading a report from the International Monetary Fund about the state of the UK economy. I was particularly struck by one bit:
“To prevent ‘welfare tourism’, the UK has restricted access to social benefits for new A8 immigrants during the first year of employment. That probably accounts for the fact that practically all immigrants hold jobs and the percentage on welfare is much smaller than that of the native population.”
 The IMF obviously has robust analysis and interpretation. Do you think that the Bill will tighten up a process that has already been recognised internationally as tight?

Sir Andrew Green:   No, I do not. What you are referring to was of course only for the A8 nationals. It was brought in at the last minute basically to try and deter welfare shopping by eastern Europeans, and has had some success in that. On the whole, we have not had people coming here just for the benefits, but as people come up to their 12 months on the register, they become qualified. Numbers are already increasing. I have no objection to that; that is part of being in Europe. However, I do not think that that, of itself, is enough to deal with the wider question of welfare shopping.
Indeed, there is an even wider point there too.In our negotiations with the European Union over enlargement, we—not just us, but Governments—completely failed to see, first, the potentially massive impact on migration from much poorer countries to richer ones and, secondly, the wide scope for eventual benefit shopping. Looking into the detail, we find that it will become extraordinarily easy for people from poorer countries in Europe to go benefit shopping in other countries, because measures brought in on the basis of free movement of labour have the effect that, once in the other country, people can claim benefits on a much higher level than in their own country. One quick example is child benefit, which eastern Europeans can already claim. They claim at British rates, which is about five times what is needed in Poland. That is just a small example.

Q 326

Iain Wright: On a slightly broader point, the IMF and recent PricewaterhouseCoopers reports seem to suggest that the UK economy has grown because of migrants coming in—relatively highly skilled young men, plugging domestic skills shortages. As a result, there is a higher tax receipt and the UK economy is growing more than it normally would. Does not the Bill tighten the illegal aspects of working in a positive manner, so that people who want to and are allowed to come here are much more controlled, so to speak? The tighter control regime is to the benefit of everybody—indigenous and migrant—because the migrants have positive reassurance that they can be here. Do you accept that?

Sir Andrew Green:   There are two halves to that question, and I accept the second half but not the first. You said that migration is adding to economic growth, and that is undeniable. However, it is also adding to population. The normal measure of wealth is GDP per head. If you do the calculation that we have done, you will find that the addition to population is prettywell the same as the addition to production andthe resulting benefit to GDP per head, as the Government’s figures show, is less than a Mars bar a month. As far as eastern Europeans are concerned, at least in part, that is because they are low-paid and they go into low-paid jobs.
However, as a general proposition, if you look back over the years you will see that Government estimates of the addition to both production and growth, both of which have been quoted in the House of Commons, show very little per head. One gives 4p a week and the other 14p a week. Work in the United States, Canada and Holland points to a slightly higher figure—about 0.1 per cent. of GDP, which is about 40p. We are talking about very small sums, in so far as such things can be measured. However, I accept that a lot of things cannot be measured in terms of easing particular gaps or on matters such as diversity and new ideas. I do not suggest that everything in this world can be measured, or that money is everything, but I am saying thatthe Government’s case for large-scale immigration is absolute nonsense. That case does not exist.
Your second point concerned the value of tightening up on illegals. I certainly agree with that; there are many positive aspects to it. One of them is that if employers have to train more British indigenous workers, that is a very good thing, and they should not be allowed to dip out of it by employing illegals.

Q 327

Stewart Jackson: Sir Andrew, first I should like to commend your organisation for adding to the debate in an intelligent and rational way, although you would not take that view if you had heard the TGWU last week. There has been debate in this Committee over the past few weeks about the suggestion that this measure is a legislative sledgehammer to crack an administrative nut. Isnot the key issue the unreliability or unavailabilityof accurate data about immigration under this Government, and possibly under former Governments? Do you believe that that can be corrected, for instance by a more robust collection of statistics or even—dare I invite you to comment on this?—by a border agency such as that which this Committee has discussed? How can we rectify the situation so that we know what numbers we are talking about and can make intelligent policy decisions based on those data?

Sir Andrew Green:   That is a good question. The first thing that I would say is that I do not believe that you are dealing with an administrative nut; you are dealing with a major issue about which there is extremely widespread concern among the public. As you probably know, 75 per cent. of the population would like an annual limit to immigration. That is just one measure, but every poll will tell you that and every poll will tell you that 80 per cent. have no confidence in the present system, so it is not an administrative nut.
Secondly, is this the right way to get a better idea of what is going on? It might be the only way. Its purpose is to provide a means of counting people in and counting people out as individuals. I have justbeen to the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore. In all those countries, I was both counted in and counted out as Sir A. Green. It is perfectly possible to do that. That is what the measures are aiming at. Once we have that, we will have a number of other things. We will have a much more accurate idea of numbers, which is becoming important. Immigration is now so high that it is very important to know what it is, how tight the labour market is and what to do about interest rates, as the Governor of the Bank of England has said repeatedly.
Even if we go down that road, and I sincerely hope that we will, I should like to draw your attention to a potential weakness that could blow the whole system out of the water. I hope that the Government are conscious of it. The pressure on visa-issuing posts is so great that they get their brownie points for dealing with the queue. I noticed that when the Minister gave evidence he referred to Pakistan and the speed at which it had dealt with its queues. That may be brilliant or it may not. It may be that they were just dishing out visas. As you know, on average issuers have something like11 minutes to decide.
Related to that is an important second point, which is that decisions whether to issue bright new issues are not legal decisions. They are matters of judgment by the entry clearance officer as to whether the person standing in front of him will go home at the end of it. If that goes wrong, the whole system is futile. People simply come in with visas that they should never have had in the first place. We will be helped by the fact that this system will tell us that they have overstayed. At the moment there is absolutely no effective feedback. We will know that they have overstayed, but how are you going to find them and remove them? We have half a million whom we cannot remove now and we are making no impression on that half a million.
We issue 2 million visas a year and refuse half a million. You do not have to be very far wrong with those issues to build up a very large illegal community in Britain, so what I come back to is the care with which those visas are issued in the first place. In my view, it is going wrong. The balance is going wrong. The pressures are too great and we are moving towards a kind of computerised tick-the-box system that is extremely easy to fool. If applicants stand in front of a visa officer he will know, for example, if a person comes from a good family, if his father has a big business or whatever. Any of you who have stood in a visa section—I have stood in a lot of them—will know what the pressures are and how you rely on the instincts of the entry clearance officer and the support of his local staff. We are moving away from that. We have these systems whereby you apply to some agency somewhere downtown. That is a serious weakness and actually also extremely inconvenient to the applicant, because they cannot get at the man who is taking the decision. I will not go on about it, Mr. Illsley, but I want to underline the fact that your entire effort will be wasted if the Government do not re-examine the matter.
One delicate issue that I wish to mention is that we should not send immigration officers or ECOs of dual heritage to the country of their other heritage. That leaves them much too vulnerable to pressures offamily, friends and so on. I am not saying that they would—well, I am saying what I am saying. They are just too vulnerable. By all means send them to a different country, but not to their own other country. That is foolishness, and it is happening on a significant scale.

Q 328

Stewart Jackson: I have read the evidence that you submitted by way of a research paper that the Library prepared. Do you think that the judiciary are letting us down with regard to the deportation of foreign criminals, or would you put the blame for that at the door of the Home Office as we stand now in the post-May 2006 situation?

Sir Andrew Green:   There are two issues here. There was clearly a serious administrative failure in even considering these people for deportation, and that was obviously a Home Office problem, but I think that the essential problem comes back to the state of the law. That in turn comes back to the ECHR, which I mentioned, and article 3. We must find a way around that. At the moment, the Government are supporting a Dutch case before the ECHR that they hope will ease it up. I think that it is to be considered in the summer. Maybe that is the way forward. Of course, it would be the convenient way forward, if there is enough progress on that case, but if there is not, we have to think again. We cannot be in the situation that I described.

Q 329

Joan Ryan: Sir Andrew, I am interested in your analysis of the link between illegal entry and organised crime. I am sure that you are aware that estimates suggest strongly that around75 per cent. of illegal entrances are facilitated. Our approach to tackling that involves strengthening the borders, introducing measures to count in and out and to know who individuals are through biometric ID and so on and extending the scope of our powers regarding facilitation, particularly in relation to territoriality. What is your analysis of the link between organised crime and illegal entry? What do you think would be an effective means of tackling it?

Sir Andrew Green:   First, we strongly support your measures. We think that they are useful. Secondly, the people doing such things are highly sophisticated, as you well know. As soon as one measure is taken, they will seek to find a way around it. One has to stay on the case. The introduction of the Serious Organised Crime Agency was a major and helpful step, as was the tightening of the law that you described. I think that heavy penalties on employers will also help as we tighten up the situation generally. I am sure you know  that there were only eight successful prosecutions of employers in the past five years. That is bound to encourage illegal arrivals. As all that is tightened up, there will be much less incentive.
If I may be heretical, we ought eventually to move to the point where people found to be entering illegally are detained until they are removed. At the moment, the detention estate just will not permit that, but it should be the position. In the long term, we should be aiming for that.

Q 330

Joan Ryan: On a different topic, we have seen a drop in other categories of asylum seeker, but the number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children seems to remain reasonably steady. I am concerned about the numbers, and those who are found not to have a founded case but who cannot be returned because of problems of reception arrangements in their country of origin. Do you think that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are being used to get a foothold to assist the entry of others? How big do you think that problem is?

Sir Andrew Green:   I think that there is little question about it, and I would be surprised if your own papers did not demonstrate that. There are serious problems in relation to those children. We do not say much about it, because we think that with net foreign immigration at 300,000, that is where the focus of attention should be, but in terms of justice, we should take firmer measures to discourage the use of children for that purpose. The firmest measure would be to send them home, but you could do that only if you could make satisfactory arrangements in their home countries. At present, it would almost be cheaper to send them all to Eton—not quite, but very nearly. They are costing £20,000 a throw.
Such children are being deliberately put into Britain to live on the British taxpayer and so that eventually they might bring their parents with them. That is unacceptable, but the problem is that we are the only people who will say that in public. A huge number of organisations take a different view.

Q 331

James Clappison: May I return to the judgment of entry clearance officers and the granting of visas? What you have told us today about the granting of visas certainly fits in with what I have been told on visits to posts overseas with the Home Affairs Committee about the importance of the judgment of the person on the spot who is making the decision about granting the visa—their local knowledge, their experience, all the things we rely on them for. Clause 19 appears to be allowing evidence to be given to challenge the exercise of that judgment in front of a tribunal in this country as opposed to at post. That is my understanding of it—it will allow evidence to be given to an appeal tribunal against the exercise of the discretion at the post overseas. How importantly do you think we should value the exercise of that discretion, using as it does the judgment of individual immigration officers, based upon their experience, their knowledge and their work?

Sir Andrew Green:   That judgment is absolutely essential. I think appeals against that judgment should not be allowed. It is turning into a legal nightmare. A  foreigner applying to come to Britain does not have any particular right to come here and if they get refused, they get refused. I am sure that there is no other country that bends over quite so far backwards in order to provide rights of appeal to those who are refused. I think we should minimise the scale of appeals and not provide any more access for it. The wretched Home Office is overwhelmed by numbers as it is. The number of appeals for family visitors has doubled every year since the costs were removed; it is now possible to appeal for free. We now have a thousand appeals a week. It is costing the taxpayer£1 million a week. What is more—I’m afraid you have got me started—it is not just mum and dad. For families of the size we are talking about, the number who qualify is of the order of somewhere between60 and 100, and they can all appeal. What is more, they can appeal even if the main purpose of their visit is not to visit their relatives. This whole business of appeals against refusal of visas is getting out of hand and I hope that when the Government have time, and courage, they will take an axe to it.

Q 332

James Clappison: What you have just told us was not contradicted by the evidence that the Home Affairs Committee received about the relationship between appeals tribunals in this country and decisions that were taken in post. We are dealing with the points-based system—

Sir Andrew Green:   Absolutely. On that point, I heard a very senior judge in the immigration appeal tribunal—I think he runs it—who was asked whether he had ever been to a post. He said, “Oh no, I never go to a post in case it influences my judgment”. I will leave it at that.

Q 333

James Clappison: On the points-based system generally, this will govern applications for work permits for people from outside the EU. How significant a source of migration, and of economic migration, do you think work permits have been in the past few years? That is, work permits from outside the EU carrying a right of settlement in this country.

Sir Andrew Green:   They have been quite significant. The number of work permits issued has, depending on how you define them, trebled or quadrupled. Of course, those people can—and do—bring their families. They can apply after four years, now five years, for settlement. Ninety-five per cent. of thosewho have applied for settlement have been granted it. So it has been a major source of immigration and unfortunately it has coincided with the weakening, not to say collapse, of our border controls. So, at the same time as our border controls were becoming extremely ineffective, we were actually encouraging immigration on a significant scale. Then of course we had the miscalculation over east Europe, and the net result has been therefore the crisis that we now face.

Q 334

James Clappison: Whilst the contribution of economic migration to economic growth may be a matter for debate, do you think that in looking at these proposals we should bear in mind that there can be little doubt that people who do come to this country will want, for example, a roof over their heads, that they will want housing, that they will need to use the infrastructure in this country and that this will have other economic effects?

Sir Andrew Green:   There is no question about that. In fact, at present one in three new households is a result of immigration. That is on the Government’s forecast of immigration, of 145,000. The actual rate is already much higher than that. So, yes, to the extent that someone comes here on a work permit and benefits the employer, that is one thing. But there is also a sense in which the taxpayer is picking up the cost of everything else—schools, roads, hospitals and transport—and to an extent the convenience of the indigenous population is being affected in the years that it would take to put in that extra infrastructure. So, it would be quite wrong to have an immigration policy driven by employers, and that is what we have been moving towards.
Until 1995, roughly, we issued 40,000 work permits a year. That was deemed to be enough. Now, suddenly, there is this huge demand for more, and the reason, of course, is that it is very convenient for the employers. You take a skilled man off the shelf and you do not have to train a Brit. Furthermore, a Brit might move to another company, whereas a foreigner is less likely to. So, to the extent that you bring in skills from overseas, you are reducing the incentive for employers to train their own British employees and that is clearly what is happening.
We would say two things about the points system. The first is that it does not change very much, if you look at it in detail. The other is that, if you set out the number of points required and how many points you get for x, y and z, it is not terribly difficult to construct the application in order to get the points that you need, if necessary by forging documents—and in most countries you can forge whatever document you like. Then, if you add to that a whole right of appeal, which I think may be envisaged—it is not clear from the Bill, but the implication of the Bill is that it is envisaged—you are making another rod for the Home Office’s back. The bottom line is that if someone does not get a work permit, they do not get a work permit. It seems to me that to have a whole range of appeals is something that needs to be closely examined.

Eric Illsley: I remind Members that we finish at11.30 am and I have four Members who wish to ask questions.

Q 335

Kerry McCarthy: You talk about the need for an annual limit on immigration. How do asylum seekers fit into that system?

Sir Andrew Green:   They do not. I do not think that you can, or should, set a limit for asylum seekers. If they are qualified, that is fine; let us have them in. If they are not, they should go. They are not part of this argument.

Q 336

Kerry McCarthy: Okay. Is there not a danger that people would use the asylum-seeking process as another route into the country, rather than coming via the migrant worker route?

Sir Andrew Green:   They do now, on a substantial scale. Roughly three out of four applicants are found to have a case that is unfounded, either for asylum or for what is now humanitarian protection. So, yes, they will try to use the asylum system.
 I should also add that the number of applications for asylum has gone down to fewer than 30,000 a year. So, it is only one in 10 of net foreign migration. That is, in part, why we are not talking about asylum at present. We think that the real issues are about immigration. I also think that the Government deserve some credit; they have got those asylum numbers down. It would be nice if the numbers went even further down—in terms of false claims, that is.

Q 337

Kerry McCarthy: May I follow up on what you said about the staffing of the entry clearance posts? Am I right in thinking that you are saying that if there is a British national of Indian origin, for example, they should not be allowed to work at the entry clearance posts in India?

Sir Andrew Green:   Correct.

Q 338

Kerry McCarthy: Because you think—basically, you are saying that they are liable to engage in corrupt behaviour.

Sir Andrew Green:   No, I did not say that; I very carefully did not say that. I said that they could come under family or other pressures.

Q 339

Kerry McCarthy: But that, in effect, means that they would not be trusted to do their job properly, if the effect is of their being corrupt in the way that they do their job.

Sir Andrew Green:   In a society in which family and tribe are extremely important, to a measure that most of us do not really understand, I think that it is unwise to submit someone to those possible pressures, and it is unnecessary to do so. They are probably perfectly good entry clearance officers—

Q 340

Kerry McCarthy: You are saying that they cannot be trusted. You are not saying that it is for their own benefit, really; you are saying that they cannot be trusted.

Sir Andrew Green: You see, I am not saying that. I am being very careful not to say that. I am saying, do not put people under that pressure when you do not need to—send them somewhere else.

Q 341

Kerry McCarthy: I was at the deputy high commission in Mumbai recently, which employs a number of local staff. Presumably, you are saying that it should not employ local people either.

Sir Andrew Green:   No; you have not understood the point. There is a difference between local staff and entry control officers. The local staff are invaluable. They often provide the interpretation, the local knowledge and so on, but the decision is taken by the entry control officer, who is UK-based. Actually, we always have some problems with local staff in terms of corruption, and in both the posts that I headed I hadto sack people. It is very hard to detect corruption by local staff, but when you do you have to sack them—and I did, without hesitation. So what I am saying is in reference to the entry control officers, not the local staff.

Q 342

Jamie Reed: We have touched on the role of employers in this policy area. Do you believe that unscrupulous—and, some would  say, parasitic—employers can somehow be excused for employing illegal workers? I think that the answer would not be yes, from the evidence so far.

Sir Andrew Green:   I think that there is no excuse for employers to employ illegal workers, undercuttingthe wages of British workers and, equally seriously, undercutting honest employers. It is absolutely unacceptable. I am in touch with a number of employers who are having real difficulty. I am thinking of a cleaning firm in particular, which, as a matterof principle, operates cleanly and is having difficulty surviving, because it knows damn well that its competitors are paying a couple of quid less.

Q 343

Jamie Reed: For the purposes of the debate, it is clear, then, is it not, that the persons undercutting the minimum wage in this country are those employers, not those employees, whether legal or illegal?

Sir Andrew Green:   Exactly; yes.

Q 344

Jamie Reed: Thank you for that.

Sir Andrew Green:   And that is where the penalties should be. I agree.

Q 345

Jamie Reed: One of the hallmarks of this debate is that it is coloured, informed and inflamed by a lot of false assumptions. You clearly believe that this whole debate should be based on a factual analysis and empirical data that are beyond question.

Sir Andrew Green:   Absolutely so. That is what we have been doing for the past five years. I was engaged in a debate the other day and was criticised for stating the facts. I was told that the facts offended people. Thatis unfortunate. I think that we are now moving, Iam glad to say—steadily, slowly—towards a situation where these issues can be debated on the basis of their facts. There will always be people who try to introduce other elements, but we let that wash over us.

Q 346

Jamie Reed: On that point, you talked earlier about the cost to the Treasury of illegal immigration being, perhaps, £500 million a year.

Sir Andrew Green:   If you legalise illegals, yes.

Q 347

Jamie Reed: You instantly revised that to£1 billion. Which is the correct figure?

Sir Andrew Green:   It depends on your assumptions. All these things are pretty shaky. But the key point we are making is that you absolutely must include some estimate of the extra cost of admitting half a million people to the welfare state.

Q 348

Jamie Reed: Finally, I am a little confused about the point about the dual heritage of entry officers. How far do we take this? Does this apply, perhaps, to people of dual US and UK nationality, to those with an Australian and British heritage or to people with a Canadian and British heritage? How far do we go?

Sir Andrew Green:   That would be a matter for management. But my point was addressed to those countries where family and tribal pressures are extremely high. If you judge that to be a risk in a particular country, then you should not send someone of dual heritage there for that particular job.

Q 349

Damian Green: I want to return to the enforcement clauses, because you have made the point already that, at the moment, the system has more or less collapsed—I think you used that word—and that you thought that the provisions in the Bill were excellent. Indeed, Conservative Members do not oppose the extra powers. Given the work that you have done internationally, looking at how other countries control their borders more effectively, what extra powers would be useful? As you know, we have proposed an integrated border force, bringing together the various fragmented bodies currently responsible for such matters. We have proposed that because it is what countries with better control over their borders seem to have. From your experience around the world, where have you seen the best practice that this country should adopt?

Sir Andrew Green: I will bring in a slightly different aspect of my experience, which is that the Administrations of different countries are very different from each other. On the particular point that you raise, I would say two things. The Home Office is now engaged in a massive and, I think, courageous exercise to try to get a grip on our borders. The last thing that it should do at this juncture is have a reorganisation of that kind. Bureaucracies are not Meccano—they are plants and you cannot pick them up, cut them to pieces and put them together again. They depend heavily on each person knowing what other people are responsible for and, no less importantly, knowing who is any good. If you want to get something done, you have to know the ground.
At some time in the future, there might be some benefit from a reorganisation, but British organisations are quite good at informally working with each other. Personally, I would leave it at that at this administrative juncture, without ruling out, at some future date, once we have got a hold on it, some changes in the direction that you suggest. I certainly would not do it now.

Q 350

Damian Green: My question was about other countries, and those that seem to have an effective system, even though they are very attractive countries. Whose immigration system do you think works best?

Sir Andrew Green:   Australia, probably. The effectiveness lies in two things: first, actual knowledge of who is coming and going, which is now being put in place, and secondly, the ability and resources to remove. If you have both of those, the administrative arrangements, between this body and that, are important, but not as important. We need knowledge of who is still here—and we might get a nasty shock when this comes into play—and the ability to remove those who should not be here. Already we think that there are 500,000, but we could find far more. In terms of priorities, that is where we should go next.

Q 351

Liam Byrne: I was very interested in your comments on the single border agency. It reflects things that I have said about retaining an open mind, but questioning whether now is the time to undertake such a reorganisation. From your comments, can I deduce that you are advocating an overhaul of the visa system, if not the family visitor system in particular?

Sir Andrew Green:   I will focus on just one issue, which I have already mentioned. We need to look very carefully at the resources that we are putting into that  initial check. It is going entirely in the opposite direction, and if we do not get that right, we can all go home. I think that frankly it is going wrong for the reasons that I have described: the box-ticking of, “We’ve got all these people through and we’ve got rid of this queue—wonderful”. Actually, that is not the point. The point is to have an effective judgment on each of the many cases and you cannot do it unless you have the people on the ground and you put the resources into it.

Q 352

Liam Byrne: You have personal experience of this next question. In some of the evidence that we heard in the early evidence sessions, we heard about quite wide variations in rates of abuse between different posts. It almost sounds as if you are advocating post-specific variations, if you like, in the kind of resources that are applied and the sort of metrics set and used to manage.

Sir Andrew Green:   Yes. One of the things that is being done, but should not be done, is to compare refusal rates between one country and another. If there is a high refusal rate, it may be because the standards of honesty are not the same in every country.

Q 353

Liam Byrne: So, measures to lock down successful applicants to a single identity would, presumably, help us to count people in and out; you mentioned that the Sir Andrew who was counted in to America was the same who was counted out.

Sir Andrew Green:   Absolutely, and what is happening, as you know, is that people get into this country and then send their passport home so that their cousin comes on the same one. That certainly happens in one country that I know of, and it is widespread.

Q 354

Liam Byrne: So, might it actually be a step backwards to shut down that identification system?

Sir Andrew Green:   Yes, and you must have it. Are you putting it in place?

Q 355

Liam Byrne: Yes. My final question comes back to the point made by Mr. Reed about the range of powers that this Bill puts in place to tackle illegal working. What has been attempted is quite a wide range of powers, such as the power to access Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs information, or to search personnel records, or to arrest employers who are knowingly employing people illegally, or to seize cash and to dispose of assets that are seized. Are there any obvious gaps in the strengthening of powers to tackle the principal culprits, as I think you have put it—that is, the employers who are undercutting their competitors?

Sir Andrew Green:   Those are widely drawn powers, and I entirely support them. As far as I can see, you have drawn them as widely as you could get away with, and I think that you are right to do so.

Liam Byrne: Thank you.

Eric Illsley: I thank Sir Andrew, Mr. Dennis and Mr. Norman for their attendance here this morning. The Committee will now have a short pause until the witnesses have left, before we resume deliberation on the Bill.

Clause 7

Effect of non-compliance

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Liam Byrne: The clause forms an important part of the legal machinery of clauses that we have assembled under this heading. Its purpose is to provide some disincentives for those foreign nationals who might choose to try not to comply with the regulation that we put in place requiring them to apply for a biometric immigration document. We have sought to put a number of sanctions in place—in particular, toprovide the Secretary of State with three powers to disincentivise non-compliance.
First, there is a civil penalty regime, which subsequent clauses will set out. Secondly, there is the power to curtail leave, and thirdly, there is the power to vary it. The Secretary of State would, of course, have the discretion to decide which sanction it was most appropriate to apply in any particular case. The intention would be to set out the modus operandi for that judgment to be exercised in a code of practice, but we do not want the Secretary of State to be able to pile up these sanctions, one on top of the other, but to choose between them.
An argument that was rehearsed during the debate on ID cards was about the appropriateness of sanctions to disincentivise behaviour that we wanted to discourage. There were questions about whether people from different backgrounds or those who found themselves in different circumstances might not be able to acquire a biometric immigration document, through no fault of their own, and I want to make a couple of points on that subject.
First, there are substantial incentives for foreign nationals to apply for biometric immigration documents; it is not something that people would recoil from, because biometric documents will make the lives of foreign nationals easier. During the latter part of last year, when I was going round the country holding round tables with local business and public services, I was struck by the fact that some businesses said that they were not interested in employing foreign students, for example, because they did not want to take the risk that they were here illegally.
In an earlier evidence session, National Car Parks mentioned that the transaction burden acted as a disincentive for the company to hire foreign students. Biometric immigration documents will put the minds of many people in the business community at ease, as it will make it easier for foreign nationals to prove their entitlement to be here and their right to work.
Secondly, people who are asked to apply for biometric immigration documents will often already have applied for leave to remain and have been through an application process. Some foreign nationals, such as asylum seekers who have come through the asylum process, will already have deposited their biometric and biographical information with the immigration service. In doing so they will have acquired an application registration card, which is used to manage and monitor the issuing of benefits to those who apply for asylum. Clause 5(3)(d) provides for biometric and biographical information to be rolled over into an application for a biometric immigration document.
We can give the Committee several reassurances in respect of imposing too onerous a burden on certain categories of foreign nationals. It will be a fairly straightforward process and it is important that as part of the legal machinery the Secretary of State has the ability to apply civil penalties, to curtail or to vary leave, to disregard an application, and to refuse an application for a biometric immigration document.

Damian Green: It is worth pausing for a second on the clause. As I have argued in previous debates, the immigration system must be robust, but it must also be fair, and seen to be fair, because public confidence will be restored only if it is both robust and fair.
The Minister will be aware that people are worried that the clause might be used to violate the protections offered by various international conventions to which the Government remain signed up. As we heard in the evidence session, some people believe that we should pull out of the European convention on human rights. I am not conscious that that is yet Government policy, although it is a fast-moving area, but there are genuine concerns out there that the wide powers that the clause gives to the Secretary of State might be used to violate people’s rights under the ECHR, various Community treaties or the refugee convention. It is worth noting clause 7(2)(e), which states that regulations may
“provide for the consequence of a failure to be at the discretion of the Secretary of State.”
That is potentially a hugely wide provision, giving the Secretary of State quasi-judicial powers of a high order.
No such clause should pass the House without its being noted that such powers are potentially dangerous in the hands of an unscrupulous Secretary of State. It is part of the scrutiny role of the House to point out potential dangers, which I am sure are unintended. There are points to be made about the rights of individuals under various conventions. I hope thatthe Minister can reassure us on them; otherwise, the provision will cause deep unease in various parts of the community.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 8

Use and retention of information

Paul Rowen: I beg to move amendment No. 81, in clause 8, page 5, line 26, leave out from ‘information’ to end of line 27 and insert
‘by authorised persons for any matter relating to immigration, nationality, terrorism or money-laundering.’.

Eric Illsley: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 23, in clause 8, page 5, line 27, after ‘purposes’, insert
‘in accordance with, and for the purposes of, another enactment.’.
No. 62, in clause 8, page 5, line 27, at end insert
‘but provision must be restricted to matters relating to terrorism, serious organised crime, money laundering and serious fraud’.

Paul Rowen: Having last week discussed biometric data, we move on to the use to which they can be put and their retention. Amendment No. 81 would alter subsection (2), which is broad and gives the Secretary of State sweeping powers to use information for absolutely anything. Specifically, it states clearly that information may be used for a purpose that does not relate to immigration. Since this is the UK Borders Bill and the Committee is principally concerned with securing our borders, we feel that that notion is far too broad.
The amendment is intended to get the Minister to be a little more specific. We suggest that information be used in connection with immigration and nationality—that is what the Bill is about—and in connection with any issue to do with terrorism, on which there is clearly a need to share information. We do not want to do anything that would tie the hands of the security services. In fact, we hope that one of the consequences of the Bill will be greater co-operation. We also include money laundering, because if there is drug or human trafficking going on we want it to be possible for information to be shared. Later amendments would also deal with that. We seek to be helpful and specific by saying what information should be used for instead of having the broad catch-all notion in the clause.
The amendment is a probing amendment so that we can hear from the Minister what his intentions are. Having heard the concerns expressed in our evidence sessions, we need to ensure that the information collected is used for the right purposes. It is good practice for bureaucracies to be clear about why they are collecting information and what it is used for.

Damian Green: I shall speak to the amendments in my name, amendments Nos. 23 and 62. Broadly speaking, they are intended to achieve ends similar to those of amendment. No. 81, which the hon. Member for Rochdale has just moved. We too have worries about the wide powers that regulations could give to Ministers, permitting the use of information for specified purposes that are not related to immigration. The clause is extremely open-ended and will entitle the Government to use information for any purpose they wish.
The point of amendment No. 23 is to stop fishing expeditions. With the Government seeking to introduce an era in which more and more pieces of personal data are held on more and more databases, the dangers of such expeditions become ever greater. We therefore seek to limit the use of the power to circumstances that are already enshrined in legislation and have been discussed, at least in some form, by Parliament. The amendment would limit the scope of information to purposes that are set out in statute by another enactment, so the open-ended fishing expedition would not be a possibility.
We have not had any explanation from Ministers—perhaps we will in a few minutes—of the purposes for which the Government would collect and use the information. As the hon. Member for Rochdale said, it is possible to envisage circumstances in which such information would be useful to law enforcement agencies. I am not saying that it would not be useful; clearly that would be wrong, but we believe that Parliament should be told of the purposes for which the information may be used. There is already adequate scope in existing legislation, under which Parliament has considered what is reasonable in this area.
Amendment No. 62 is similar to amendment No. 81. It provides a list. The Government should have good reason to use for any other purposes data that are gathered for immigration purposes. The amendment lists activities that are dealt with by SOCA, which the Government have already decided are particularly serious and which would cause little controversy between hon. Members on Opposition and Government Benches. The amendment would help the Government to reassure the public that the Bill is not about giving the Government a free ride in collecting data and using them as they wish, but that they would use them in only the most serious circumstances where there is a clear public benefit from doing so.
It would help the Minister’s case to accept the amendments; he would have wide support for the use of the powers created for the immigration system to stop international, serious, organised crime. He will have much less support if there is public suspicion that he or any of successors will be able to use the powers for an as yet unspecified purpose, of which many members of the public might not approve. The amendments would strengthen the Bill by providing a degree of public reassurance that it is not there at the moment, because the clause is so open-ended.

Liam Byrne: These are helpful amendments, because they have given me pause for thought and deliberation. I shall start by clarifying the scope and orbit of the clause. It is not about the transfer of the information concerned to other parts of Government or other parts of public service. Parliament has already spoken on that matter, specifically in section 21 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, which quite properly put in place a rigorous gateway through which the Home Office would have to go to share information with others. That could be done only in line with obligations already on the Secretary of State set out under the Human Rights Act 1998, the Data Protection Act 1998 and other legislation.
The subject of the clause is how the Home Secretary can share the information with other parts of his business, as it were. How can we ensure that that is not being done inappropriately? Amendment No. 23 would curtail the movement of information to the purposes set out in another enactment. Amendments Nos. 62 and 81 would constrain the use of the information for non-immigration purposes. A helpful starter for 10 has been listed.
I said last week that the purpose of the Bill was not to give unfettered power to the Secretary of State. I know that there are some days when that seems desirable, but in the round it is not. It is important to underline the fact that, even if that were the ambition, it would be a forlorn ambition, because the Secretary of State does not have unfettered power to share information even with other parts of his own operations. The Human Rights Act and the Data Protection Act already provide for certain constraints.
Despite the fact that those constraints are in place, there is a case to be explored for whether further constraint is merited. The amendment has prompted me to begin that exploration. We have to think carefully through a number of issues, the first of which is that amendment No. 23 suggests that the sharing and use of the information be curtailed to a purpose set out in another enactment. That is a valuable place at which to start, but a couple of issues warrant slightly further exploration. Some of the Home Secretary’s powers are exercised under royal prerogative, not under “another enactment”. A good example is the fact that the Secretary of State issues British passports under prerogative to several different types of nationality, including British overseas territories citizenship, British national overseas, British subject and British protected persons. It is possible to envisage a situation in the future when the Home Secretary would want to check biometric information that had been filed as part of a biometric immigration document application, as part of the process of reviewing someone’s application for one of those three or four different categories of passport. That would not be possible under the amendment, because it is a power exercised under royal prerogative, and issuing a passport is not in the strict legal sense an immigration function.
The second issue that needs teasing out is that the phrase “another enactment” may exclude the use of the information under clauses 1 to 4. Given that the phrase used is “another enactment”, it may be that under a strict legal definition, it is not possible for the application to be rendered to the Bill. That would need to be teased through with lawyers.
The third issue that warrants a little exploration is particularly relevant to amendment No. 62. The proposed list does not mention nationality, but it is possible to envisage a situation in which we want to make use of biometric immigration that has beenfiled as part of a biometric immigration document application during the naturalisation process. We might want to validate the individual who is applying for naturalisation and use biometric information that has already been filed and checked.
The fourth issue that needs a little more explanation—I hope the Committee will agree—is in the list of applications, which has been helpfully set out in the spirit of probing our ambitions. The list does not refer to prevention of crime. Immigration officershave a number of criminal investigation powers. They might, for example, investigate crimes of forgery, bigamy, theft and perjury. With such criminal investigation powers come associated powers of arrest, search and investigation. It is quite possible that an immigration officer would seek to use biometric information that has been captured as part of the application process for the biometric immigration document. One can particularly imagine that such a facility might be useful where forgery offences were being investigated.
The amendments are therefore extremely helpful, as there is a real case for us to explore how the Bill should be more specific about the limits on the Secretary of State’s power to deploy the information in other parts of his business. With those words on the record, I hope that the hon. Member for Rochdale will not seek to press the amendment. These have been helpful probing amendments that have certainly started the process of deliberation in my office. Where and if appropriate, I think that we will need to table an amendment of our own to achieve the ambitions that hon. Members rightly have.

Paul Rowen: With those remarks, I look forward to the new provisions from the Government, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 8 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 9

Penalty

Stewart Jackson: I beg to move amendment No. 4, in clause 9, page 6, line 12, leave out ‘£1,000’ and insert ‘£5,000’.

Eric Illsley: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 63, in clause 9, page 6, line 12, leave out ‘£1,000’ and insert
‘the maximum fine on level 3 of the standard scale.’.
No. 83, in clause 9, page 6, line 13, leave out ‘14’ and insert ‘28’.
No. 5, in clause 9, page 6, line 13, after ‘days’, insert ‘and not more than 28 days’.
No. 64, in clause 11, page 7, line 19, leave out paragraph (b).

Stewart Jackson: In the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth, I shall not speak to the amendment.

Damian Green: My hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth, who is not here to move his own amendment, is doing his last duty in the Welsh Assembly, where he has been a distinguished Member for some time. He is standing down at the current elections, but he is there today for the last time. He has many talents, but not being in two places at once.

Liam Byrne: It is their loss.

Damian Green: Absolutely. Their loss is the Westminster Parliament’s gain.
Amendment No. 4 and my amendment No. 63 and consequential amendment No. 64 seek to do similar things in proposing to alter the maximum level offine. The Minister had kind words to say about the helpfulness of the previous amendments on clause 8. Amendment No. 63 is also designed to make the Bill more flexible. If the Government’s current proposal stood, the Secretary of State would constantly have to review the appropriateness or otherwise of the £1,000 fine in this area and with regard to this legislation. Immigration Bills, like buses, come along regularly under this Government, but we cannot always assume that that will be the case. The inflexibility of a straightforward fine seems to us less sensible than simply putting the maximum fine on level 3 of the standard scale, which would also have the small but significant benefit of bringing the penalties in the Bill into line with other offences and legislation where the standard scale is used. As I said, amendment No. 63 is designed to help the Minister.
Amendment No. 64 would remove reference to the Secretary of State’s decision in relation to appeals held in court. Since amendment No. 66 has not been selected, the amendment sits slightly oddly on its own, but I am sure that we will be able to return to it, perhaps in a debate on clause 10.
I hope that the Minister will take amendment No. 63 in the intended spirit, which is to make the Bill more flexible and possibly in some small way reduce the burden of future legislation that the House has to pass.

Paul Rowen: I support the comments of the hon. Member for Ashford. I believe that it is important to future-proof with some flexibility. The amendment standing in my name proposes quite a small addition to that flexibility. It seeks merely to increase from 14 days to 28 the period in which someone must pay a fine. If we are going to increase the maximum fine to take account of the severity of the offence, a small increase in the length of time in which people have to pay the penalty is quite in order.

Liam Byrne: I always look extremely sympathetically on amendments that seek to unfetter the Secretary of State or lift the cap on the powers that we are seeking. As a result, I look very sympathetically on proposals that seek to increase the civil penalty cap from £1,000 to £5,000, while the effect of subsequent amendments in the name of the hon. Member for Ashford would be to replace the £1,000 cap with a level 3 fine. I was grateful for his clarification of amendment No. 64. I agreed that the effect of that amendment sat oddly here; as it is drafted, and in the context in which it is put, the court would not have to hear an appeal against an objection notice. It appears to seek to remove appeal rights if the Secretary of State has changed his or her decision in the face of an objection. That is one interpretation of how the amendment can be read, but it is a bit unclear and now I understand why, thanks to his helpful clarification. Amendment No. 83, however, would ensure that payment could not be sought until after 28 days had passed. I was not quite sure whether that was the purpose of the amendment.
I want to reassure the Committee on four points. We seek to designate biometric immigration documents once the national identity system is up and running. We are trying to align the civil penalty regime with the penalty regime that was proposed and passed by Parliament under the Identity Cards Act 2006. We did not want a separate scheme in which there would be one kind of civil penalty for non-compliance under the 2006 Act and another that would kick in under the Bill’s biometric immigration document provisions. We therefore wanted to provide a civil penalty regime that was aligned with that approach.
We set the fine at £1,000 because we thought that that was sufficient. We looked quite closely at whether a greater level of fine was wise. The reassurance that I  would give is that that fine is not the only sanction that is available to the Secretary of State. There are a number of other sanctions, which for foreign nationals may be much more significant. For example, the power to curtail leave, vary leave and refuse an application are important sanctions that can be invoked if the £1,000 penalty is not thought sufficient.
The reference to level 3 would introduce a degree of legal complexity into the equation. Level 3 works on a points scale in the criminal offences regime, but we are seeking to put in place a civil penalty regime. A degree of legal confusion might therefore arise, and we do not think that a criminal offences regime would necessarily include the right set of sanctions. We think that the civil penalty regime is the right approach.
From the thrust of the remarks of the hon. Member for Ashford, I detected that his ambition is that the Secretary of State should not have to come back to the House constantly to update the civil penalty regime and the level of fines in place. The important reassurance is that under clause 9(6), the Secretary of State is empowered to make amendments
“to reflect a change in the value of money.”
I hope that those reassurances are helpful.

Damian Green: I take the point about clause 6, although that provision reflects only a change in the value of money and not other circumstances such as the relative level of offences. However, I am puzzled why the Minister says that civil penalties are more appropriate than criminal ones. Anyone who falls under the provisions of the clause will think that they have committed a crime—it is a statute enacted by Parliament and enforced by the authorities. That sounds much more like a criminal offence than something for civil legal procedures. I am puzzled why he thinks that the latter is more appropriate.

Liam Byrne: I would not rest my case on that point. It is just a point to note that we are seeking to put in place a civil penalty regime in which civil financial penalties, rather than fines, are incurred. A reference to a fairly well established regime of sanctions set out in criminal law might be a source of confusion. However, as I said, I do not want to overstate the significance of that point. The nub of my argument is that if we accepted the amendments, we would introduce a degree of dissonance between the civil penalty regime under the 2006 Act and that under this Bill, which would be unhelpful, particularly once the cards are designated.
A second key point is that we think that the sanctions provided for are sufficient because the Home Secretary has recourse to others should people persist with non-compliance. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Ashford about changes in the scale of seriousness, but the key points are whether we can adjust the level of the civil penalty in line with changes in the value of money and whether other sanctions are available if people persist with non-compliance—yes, those are available. That is what will be effective in driving compliance.
 That is the bottom line in the debate on the amendments before us. How do we encourage maximum compliance? I welcome what I detect is support from Opposition Members for the broad thrust of the measures—the introduction of compulsory ID cards for foreign nationals and ensuring compliance with the regime. However, I think that the sanctions in place, beginning with civil penalties but with recourse to variations or curtailment of leave, are appropriate and will be effective.

Stewart Jackson: Given the undertakings that the Minister has given to the Committee, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 10

Penalty: objection

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Damian Green: The Minister commented that there appears to have been an outbreak of consensus. I am happy to report that it is now at an end. We have serious objections to clause 10, which provides for the Secretary of State to consider appeals against penalties for failing to comply with the regulations that relate to biometric immigration documents. We do not believe that it should stand part of the Bill because we do not think that it is a sensible place in which to give the Secretary of State such quasi-judicial powers.
I assume that in a peculiar way, which the Minister did not get round to explaining, the penalties are decided on a civil rather than a criminal scale. However, even after his explanation, I am still confused as to why the creation of what, by any standards, is a criminal offence should be regarded in any way as a civil matter. I can only assume that the provision in the clause to allow someone to object to a penalty measure is in some way based on the view that it is a civil matter between the Home Secretary and the citizen. That does not seem to reflect the reality of the situation. The person involved will assume that the authority of the state is bearing down on him and that if he has committed an offence that constitutes a crime by any normal standards, it is right and proper that his appeal against the penalty for having committed that crime should be considered by the courts. We can argue about the level of the fine, but the matter will clearly be serious enough for people to expect some kind of independent hearing in the courts, or a quasi-judicial procedure, and not simply to be referred back to the Executive, which would then be acting as judge and jury.
As was the case for one of the previous groups of amendments, about which the Minister spoke relatively kindly, we think that it would help if the Government were to take the clause away and rethink it. One of the things that we have discussed in the debates on this Bill has been the level of public confidence. I am sure that public confidence would be improved if there were provisions for proper judicial hearing and redress, rather than decisions made by a single Government Department not only on the introduction and workings of the Bill but on offences committed, penalties imposed and appeals against such penalties.
The clause oversteps the mark—it creates the wrong balance between the Executive and citizen. The Minister would do well not just to think about it again and to promise to come back later, but to withdraw the clause because it imposes unnecessary penalties on citizens and an unfair system of redress in relation to them.

Liam Byrne: The Committee has just agreed that clause 9 should stand part of the Bill. The effect of that decision is that if the Bill completes its journey into statute, the Secretary of State will have the power to issue civil penalty notices to individuals who do not comply with it. As I said, the reason for proposing a civil penalty regime rather than a criminal offence is to ensure a degree of consistency between the Bill and the system of sanctions established in the Identity Cards Act 2006 and approved by Parliament. We would run into serious difficulties once the ID cards of foreign nationals had been designated as ID cards if we had a civil regime for ID cards and a criminal regime for biometric immigration documents. Given that clause 9 will now stand part of the Bill and that the Committee is suggesting that the Secretary of State should be equipped with the power to issue civil penalty notices, it would be problematic if the Committee did not provide for individuals to be able to object to the Secretary of State’s handing out civil penalty notices.
Clause 10’s provisions are quite straightforward. They will ensure that once the civil penalty regime is up and running, it runs fairly. We want to ensure that disputes between foreign nationals and the Secretary of State can be resolved at minimal cost. The clause will not eliminate any right of appeal. It is designed to act in accordance with existing schemes provided for under the Identity Cards Act. The point that I want to underline is that the offence of non-compliance with the provisions in the Bill will not be a criminal offence but a civil offence.
We are suggesting a civil penalty regime because that is how we think compliance can best be secured. A system of criminal offences would be slower—justice would be less swift—and less effective. Having provided for a civil penalty regime, it would be a bit strange for the Committee, and indeed for the House, to remove protections that have long been available in this country and abroad to citizens who disagree with the penalties handed out by the Secretary of State. It is absolutely essential that individuals should be able to object to decisions made by the Secretary of State, backed by the right of appeal if they choose to take the matter to that territory. I commend the clause to the Committee, as it is an essential protection and a consequence of clause 9.

Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 9, Noes 5.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Clause 10 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 11 and 12 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 13

Penalty: code of practice

Damian Green: I beg to move amendment No. 65, in clause 13, page 8, line 14, at end add
‘at least six months before the commencement of the provisions’.

Eric Illsley: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 84, in clause 13, page 8, line 15, at end add—
‘(7) Sections 9 to 12 shall not come into force until the code has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.’.

Damian Green: Amendment No. 65 would add to clause 13 the requirement for the Government to publish the code of practice at least six months before the commencement of the provisions. The amendment relates to a recurrent debate about how much consultation is appropriate for such legislation. There is one area of consensus. We have established that we want the system to be robust and fair. We want tostart the long, difficult process of restoring public confidence in a system in which, as we have heard this morning, there is little public confidence. Sir Andrew Green said that, broadly speaking, 80 per cent. of people think that the system is not working. I have heard the large amount of evidence given to this Committee and it is clear that the lack of confidence in the system goes both ways and comes from both sides of the argument: it comes from those who think that there is, broadly speaking, too much immigration into this country and from those who that think that the current system makes it too difficult for certain groups of people. Neither party has confidence in the current system, so it is in the Minister’s interest to try to engage them as much as possible.
A code that was properly discussed before the provisions came into effect would offer not just guidance to those involved, but a degree of reassurance and protection to those on the other side of the counter who were going through the process. Apart from the advantage that that would have in the outside world, laying the draft measures before Parliament and, therefore, before the public would make the Government more accountable for their actions. Although that may, in the short term, be mildly uncomfortable for Ministers, I am sure that the Minister would agree that it would be better to have a rocky consultation period than for enacted legislation to fall apart on the job. Governments of all parties have seen that happen at various stages.
 It is good practice, which sensible Ministers should get into especially in difficult and publicly sensitive areas, to consult more and do more in respect of publishing codes and guidelines before the operation of specific pieces of legislation commences. Amendment No. 65 seeks to do that and I commend it to the Minister in that spirit. However, if he does not accept it, as I suspect that he will not, and something goes wrong, he cannot say that he was not warned.

Paul Rowen: We have just agreed that wholesale powers should be given to the Home Secretary to impose penalties for non-compliance with clauses in the Bill. I do not have a problem with that, because the Bill has a particular purpose and job. However, it is important that a code of practice is subject to consultation and also approved by the House. My amendment seeks to pursue the affirmative process, so that the penalties are subject to public consultation before they come into operation and are approved by the House. Without that surety, as has been said earlier, the immigration system comes into disrepute. Concerns about the system have been raised. The Bill helps us on the way to developing our immigration and nationality policies. However, as we are introducing such wide-ranging penalties and appeals—powers that are solely limited to the Home Secretary—we should at least ensure that that code of practice is approved by the affirmative process in this House. I hope that the Minister appreciates the reasons given by both sides of the House as to why that might be a desirable process if the Bill is to operate efficiently and with the credibility that he wants it to have in the wider community.

Liam Byrne: I looked at this amendment very sympathetically as well. I understand the ambitions that lie behind it, and those ambitions are entirely sensible. It might be helpful if I say a little about what the clause does and why it is important. It effectively makes provision for a code of practice to be issued, so that the civil penalty regime can operate with a degree of logic, predictability and integrity. In particular, the code will set out those matters that must be considered when the Secretary of State is determining whether to give a penalty notice and what the amount will be. It may also require the Secretary of State to consider decisions that have already been taken. For example,if it has been decided that the right sanction for non-compliance is to vary leave, or curtail leave, or deny an application, the code will set out how some of those matters might be taken into account.
The clause already provides that the code must be published, that we must consult on it and that we must lay a draft before Parliament. In addition, the clause also says that the code will come into effect not by affirmative resolution but by negative resolution. That is where I pause for thought. The reason that we suggested in the Bill that a negative resolution rather than an affirmative resolution would bring the code into force was that we drew on a precedent that was set in the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006. In that Act, we provided for a code to be issued that would guide the way that the civil penalty regime would apply to those employers who were caught employing somebody illegally. The Bill contains a set of immigration procedures, so we looked back on precedents in the field of immigration.
There is, however, another precedent that could perhaps have been a more useful guide, which is the precedent set in the Identity Cards Act 2006. In that Act, along with the requirements to publish, consult and so on, we provided that the first time that the code was brought into force there would not be a negative procedure, but an affirmative procedure. Of course, revisions could then be processed by negative procedure, but in the first instance it was felt that the degree of scrutiny offered by the affirmative procedure meant that that would be a wiser route to take. Therefore, having heard the ambitions that have been expressed by Opposition Members, I will examine the clause again to see what space there is to improve it.

Damian Green: I am very grateful to the Minister for what he has just said. As I said before, this was one of the amendments that was tabled in a genuinely helpful spirit and if he will consider it in that spirit, it would be churlish not to beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 13 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 14 and 15 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 16

Conditional leave to enter or remain

Paul Rowen: I beg to move amendment No. 128, in clause 16, page 9, line 15, leave out from ‘State’ to end of line 16 and insert—
‘where it appears that there is evidence that establishes that he is likely to abscond and that such a condition is justified as being necessary in the interests of public order, public safety, national security or for the prevention of crime; and
 (v) a condition requiring him to reside at a specified address where it appears that there is evidence that establishes that he is likely to abscond and that such a condition is justified as being necessary in the interests of public order, public safety, national security or for the prevention of crime, provided that such conditions are consistent with the Human Rights Act 1998, the European Convention on Human Rights andthe obligations of the United Kingdom under the International Convenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966.’.

Eric Illsley: With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 25, in clause 16, page 9, line 16, at end add—
‘(2) For the purposes of section 3(1)(c)(v) of the 1971 Act any condition imposed upon residence must be reasonable in all circumstances.’.
No. 85, in clause 16, page 9, line 16, at end add—
‘(2) A condition about residence shall not apply if—
(a) the residence is more than 25 miles from the nearest reporting centre; or
(b) for employment purposes, a different location is more suitable.’.
No. 86, in clause 16, page 9, line 16, at end add—
‘(2) The Secretary of State shall lay before Parliament, not more than 12 months after the commencement of the provisions under this section, a report on the operation of these conditions.’.
No. 129, in clause 16, page 9, line 16, at end add—
‘(2) After section 3(1)(c) of that Act insert—
“(d) A condition about reporting or residence under paragraph (c) above shall not apply if the person is under the age of 18.”’.

Paul Rowen: We have had a good debate this morning, and we have moved forward. I suspect that we will not have the same measure of agreement with regard to clause 16. At first sight it seems inoffensive and small, but its provisions are vital to people’s confidence in the operation of our immigration system. It is about the conditions that the Secretary of State may place on a person who has been granted leave to remain.
We are considering people’s liberty. When a decision has been made that someone has a legitimate right to remain in the country, we may want to place conditions on that right. I am concerned about the open-ended nature of the clause. Amendment No. 128 would insert an important safeguard to ensure that any conditions that the Secretary of State places on someone staying in the country, such as restricting their movement or place of abode, should comply fully with the UK Government’s treaty obligations as set out in the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European convention on human rights and with the obligations that rest with us under the international covenant on civil and political rights. That is important. If the Secretary of State has cause to restrict someone’s movement, there must be clear parameters and it must be stated clearly that the person subject to that curtailment can use those treaties and obligations to argue against the restriction if they feel it unfair and unreasonable.

James Clappison: I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. What is there in the conditions in the Bill to prevent somebody from arguing their case under the European convention on human rights or other international agreements that this country has entered into?

Paul Rowen: Much of what we have been doing has been because a lot is left unsaid in the Bill. Being reasonable about the operation of the Bill, we have attempted to specify matters. We are attempting here to make it clear that the Bill will comply with the treaty obligations that this country has entered into. No hon. Member should have a problem with that, because they are policies to which this Government have signed up.
Amendment No. 129 relates to any restrictions placed on someone under the age of 18. I am concerned about children being subject to stringent conditions. Will the Under-Secretary explain why she feels that to be necessary? The bulk of the young people concerned will be in full-time education. We had debates earlier about who the right people are to deal with young people, and I do not see the point of someone under the age of 18 having their education disrupted and having to travel long distances, perhaps with their parents, to travel to a detention or immigration centre. That would be disruptive and could be quite unsettling to a young person. I therefore hope that we can make a distinction for the reporting rights for young people, given that they are highly unlikely to abscond if their parents are subject to reporting.
The final amendment actually tries to take the purpose of this clause further. I am greatly concerned that as the law is currently framed, asylum seekers are not allowed to work while their appeal is progressing. That is expensive and unnecessary; given that many asylum seekers are in this country for a considerable time, and at considerable cost to this country, it would reduce the costs to the Exchequer if they were able to gain employment. It is also good, from a human point of view, for any individual to have self-worth and to demonstrate that by employment.
So, the purpose of amendment No. 130 is to grant permission to any person who is granted limited right to remain,
“to seek employment from two months after an appeal has been lodged”
I do not want to see that being used as an excuse or reason for appeals to be delayed further. We need to ensure that the appeal process is firm, fair and expedited. While this is not an excuse to prolong the appeal, if that person is involved in one then they ought to have the right to work—with any income that they receive being offset against any benefits received. I hope that the Minister can give us the assurances that we seek on the first part of clause 16, and that he will consider extending it to allow asylum seekers to gain employment.

Damian Green: It was clear, both in reading the written evidence that was submitted to the Committee and over several sessions of oral evidence that we have taken, that clause 16 was one of the most difficult and controversial in the Bill. In that spirit, I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Enfield, North, who will respond to this debate. Clearly, she has been landed with this particular hot potato. Plus ça change, she may well feel.
The three amendments in my name, and that of my hon. Friend, all seek to tie down whether this clause will be practical or unduly onerous on large groups of people. The Committee will have heard what the hon. Member for Rochdale has just said, particularly about its potential effect on children. These amendments look more widely at anyone who would suddenly find restrictions on them that were not there before, as a result of the clause.
On the detail of the amendments, amendmentNo. 25 simply seeks that
“any condition imposed upon residence must be reasonable in all circumstances”.
That reflects the worries, which I am sure the Minister will have absorbed from the written and oral evidence, that the clause’s potential for putting onerous restrictions on people is very great. We have seen not only those fears, but vagueness in other areas around residency requirements. For example, some sex offenders have got round that by putting down patently ridiculous addresses such as “the woods”. No one would want that failure in the system to be replicated in residency requirements imposed by this Bill.
I hope that if the Minister accepts some or all of our amendments it will reassure those who think that the conditions are onerous and too widespread, and encourage the Government to ensure that the regulations are effective. Any accommodation included under the residency requirements must be inhabitable and conducive to the individual’s safety, and I hope that the Minister will address those practical matters.
Amendment No. 85 is a probing amendment of the serious consequences of the clause. At the outer extreme of the fears expressed about the clause is that it could be used for internal control by insisting that some people have to live in certain places simply because of their immigrant status. I dare say that Ministers would regard that as unacceptable; I am aware that one may wish to have strict controls over where certain groups in society can live, but I cannot believe they would wish to apply such controls to anyone who has limited leave to remain in this country. That will include many thousands of people who have lived here for a long time and lead blameless and extremely useful lives. People fear that the clause as drafted would have a serious effect on them, which cannot be the intention of the Bill.
The clause would allow a Government to use the Bill for internal immigration controls. Although reporting to an immigration officer may in some cases be sensible for some categories of people, this blanket approach smacks of an attempt to control the whereabouts of people who lead blameless lives and who are accepted by the authorities as being in this country legally.
It is not too difficult to imagine scenarios in which the clause would have a very serious effect on people’s lives. For example, a person who has secured employment in a distant rural area and is required to report to an immigration centre may find that the nearest one is 50 or 60 miles away. The proposal to set up centres for passport interviews has already provoked resistance in rural areas because of the travelling distance it will involve, the time it will take and the inconvenience it will cause.
The amendment draws attention to the fact that the clause may affect yet another group of people in that respect. Anyone who takes employment in a rural area is statistically unlikely to be highly paid, and therefore unlikely to have access to a car. They will therefore have to rely on public transport in areas where it is least available and reliable. People in rural areas with low-paid jobs who are least able to afford it will have to take days off just to report to immigration centres. The Minister will argue that that is absurd and I agree that it is. During the passage of this Bill we should think about whether we want to impose such conditions.
If the point of the clause is to give the Government the power to follow and track those who give them particular concern, I would have a good deal of sympathy with that policy. But the clause does not say that. It is so widely drawn that it does not restrict itself to that laudable activity but goes well beyond and will affect people whom no sensible Government will want to spend time, resources and effort following round the country or keeping address records for. I hope the Minister can consider those points.
Amendment No. 86 reopens the debate about commencement provisions from the other side. The Minister made the point in a previous debate that he sympathised with the idea of having a proper code of conduct before certain provisions of the Bill are put in place. What we are saying about amendment No. 86 is that the same thing should apply after the legislation is passed. We are aware that there is considerable public concern surrounding these measures—in particular the sweeping powers within the measures that are included in this particular clause. It seems sensible from all points of view that Parliament should be informed how the system is working once it is in operation, which parts of it are or are not functioning and what the Government suggest should be changed. This is good from Parliament’s point of view—it will demonstrate that our scrutiny of legislation does not have to end just because the legislation is on the statute book and that we are actually concerned with the practical impact of this legislation on the daily lives of many thousands of people. But it will also act as a useful corrective for Ministers and their officials, becauseif they know that a public report will have to be made 12 months after the enactment of a particular piece of legislation, that would serve to sharpen up the act of everyone involved in the passage of the legislation and its implementation.
If I may tread on delicate ground, I would suggest that this is particularly appropriate for the Home Office at this stage in its evolution, because—I will not quote the Home Secretary on the IND again, but Ministers will recognise what I am talking about—there is a degree of public doubt about the ability of the Home Office to operate large-scale change effectively. It would be a gesture of self-confidence by Ministers to say that they were quite happy for Parliament to return tothe subject and to have a public report put before it12 months after the enactment. There would be practical consequences as well, because if my fears are realised and certain people are unable to take up work because of the requirements under the residency terms of this clause, Parliament and the British people should know about that because it would be an important feature in the wider debate about immigration.
There has been some public movement on the debate. A few years ago there was a feeling that people were coming to this country to live off benefits; even those who are most hostile to immigration have moved away from that and are now worried about people coming here to work. If we find—as I suspect we may—that we are passing legislation that makes it more difficult for those who are in this country legally to work, it is worth having that reported on as that would be a perverse effect which I am sure the Minister does not want.
There are a number of other human rights points, to which I hope we can return in the clause stand part debate. These specific amendments seek to address some of the fears of the groups that have scrutinised this clause. I hope the Minister can look on them sympathetically.

Joan Ryan: It is a pleasure to speak in this Committee under your Chairmanship, Mr. Illsley, and that of your co-Chairman.
 The clause is very important and we hope thatthe measures in it will help to improve contact management and enforce compliance with our immigration laws. The measures are, therefore, important. However, I am pleased to discuss the amendments because scrutiny of those measures is very important. They place conditions and, to some extent, restrictions on individuals and it is right that they should undergo close scrutiny.
I hope that I can reassure Opposition Members about the use of those powers. Clause 16 amendsan existing statutory provision—section 3 of the Immigration Act 1971—by adding two new conditions regarding reporting and residency. There is, therefore, no inconsistency in our approach towards reporting and residency conditions and the other conditions set out in section 3—police registration, employment, maintenance and accommodation—all of which are very important.
We are very clear that the clause will be used to improve contact management with particular categories of people and have indicated the two categories with which we will seek to use these conditions first. However, we consider that there are advantages to a light-touch approach in the legislation, which will allow us to apply the new powers to other categories, should a need for more effective contact management become manifest.

Crispin Blunt: Just before the Under-Secretary turns to the amendments, what answer or comfort can she give to Professor Anderson and his colleagues at Cambridge? When giving evidence, he talked about overseas students who might be facing a requirement to go to Bury St. Edmunds as the nearest reporting centre. If he and his colleagues are trying to market Cambridge university overseas and that potential requirement is part of the pitch, it will make their lives rather more difficult. What answer does she have for him?

Joan Ryan: The difference between the residencyand reporting restrictions and the distance between places is an important issue that I will come towhen discussing one of the amendments. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we have not named students with limited leave as one of the categories that we will apply the provisions to at this stage. However, the power is broad and we do not deny that these measures could cover anybody with limited leave. The reassurance that I will give in a moment on amendment No. 85 will probably cover his and Professor Anderson’s concerns should the measures ever apply to students, although it is not envisaged that they will.

James Clappison: The Under-Secretary says that the provision applies to all people with limited leave to remain. Will she tell us who in particular she is thinking of? If not students, at whom is this provision targeted?

Joan Ryan: Indeed, the issue was discussed in our evidence session and I intend to come to the relevant groups. To make it clear at the outset, the two identified categories of people to whom we will seek to apply the conditions—not necessarily including every single person in each category—are foreign national prisoners whom we are unable to remove because of legal barriers and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. I shall say a little bit more about those two groups in a moment, and I am sure that more will be said about them in the stand part debate.

Paul Rowen: I am interested by what the Under-Secretary says. Given that she is seeking to apply the measures only to a limited number of cases, why does the Bill not frame the provision in that way? If the Government then want to extend it, it could be extended by an affirmative resolution. Given what she said, does she accept that the clause is very broad and too open-ended for Opposition Members?

Joan Ryan: I accept that it is broad, but I do not accept that it is too open-ended. As I said, we shall move on to respond to the amendments and will, I hope, give the reassurance that the hon. Gentleman is seeking.
I opened my remarks by saying that there is no inconsistency between our approach here and the overall approach in section 3 of the ImmigrationAct 1971, which we are amending. The 1971 Act provides three conditions that can be applied to limited leave, with no restriction on what groups within the limited leave category we can apply them to. Equally, I said that we thought that a light touch was appropriate so that we can be flexible. If circumstances change, we will be able to use the conditions as and when they are appropriate.
Amendment No. 25 would require that
“any condition imposed upon residence must be reasonable in all circumstances”.
The Human Rights Act 1998 makes it unlawful for public authorities to act in a way that is incompatible with convention rights. There is also a general legal requirement on public authorities to exercise their powers in a reasonable way. That will apply to the new powers in clause 16. It is perfectly reasonable to ask that we apply our powers in a reasonable way, but the Bill is trying to do so and other legislation already exists to ensure that we do so.

Crispin Blunt: While we are on the test of reasonableness, can the Under-Secretary explain why the clause contains the words
“to an immigration officer or the Secretary of State”?
Obviously, immigration officers are responsible to the Secretary of State, as are the police to some degree under the listed requirements to report. Is there some suggestion that people will be required to report to the Secretary of State as individuals? That cannot possibly be correct. What does
“or the Secretary of State”
actually mean? Is it a suggestion that the Secretary of State does not have very much to do and can take on that responsibility?

Joan Ryan: I think that I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that the Home Secretary is indeed busy and has plenty to do. A cursory glance at the media on any particular day will reassure the hon. Gentleman of that. As he says, the line of reporting ultimately ends at the Secretary of State, so it is only right that the Secretary of State should have the same requirement.
In terms of reasonableness, there is little point in creating further legislation within the Bill when the Human Rights Act 1998, convention rights and the legal requirement on public authorities to exercise powers in a reasonable way already exists.

Crispin Blunt: I did not quite understand. Is that some formulaic use of statute, whereby the Secretary of State has to appear when officers of his Department are named—in this case immigration officers—or is it some sort of cover for an ability to introduce another set of officers to whom people might be required to report?

Joan Ryan: I can tell the hon. Gentleman that it says
“report to...the Secretary of State”
so that we can require an individual to report to an IND official who is not an immigration officer. That is the reason; it not in the least Machiavellian, nor are we trying to fit in with anybody’s agenda. Our aim is to keep in touch with certain individuals whom we have an interest in monitoring more closely. There is no need to amend the clause by including fine details that can be left to the policy guidance that is to be published later.

James Clappison: I see the Under-Secretary’s point about keeping in touch with foreign prisoners who have been released from prison but cannot be deported for some reason. Can she say a little about the other case that she mentioned? She referred to asylum-seeking children, and amendment No. 129 relates to them. Does she require this condition in respect of those children for the sake of their welfare or for some other reason?

Joan Ryan: I thank the hon. Gentleman for probing a little more closely on that important category. If he will bear with me, I shall come to it. The protection issue that he raises is integral to our desire to apply such conditions to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. We will apply reporting and residency conditions to children only when strictly necessary, either for their own welfare or with a view to closer contact management as they approach 18, particularly because, all things being equal, we will seek to remove unaccompanied asylum-seeking children when they reach the age of 18.
We will liaise with local authorities when deciding on the application of the conditions to children in care. Let me remind the Committee—the hon. Member for Rochdale has clearly taken much interest in the matter—that on 1 March we published a consultation paper on unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, “Planning Better Outcomes and Support for Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children”. That includes proposals to reduce the disproportionate burden of caring for such children that falls on local authorities in London and the south-east. It proposes concentrating care provision for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in local authority areas in which special infrastructure exists, and ensuring that care planning takes into account a young person’s immigration status.
Although unaccompanied asylum-seeking children have many needs in common with other children in care, they also have some very different needs and reasons for being in care. Many are much older when they go into the care system, and their problem is that they are separated from their families. It could be that they are not being returned to their country of origin not because they are at risk of harm or in danger because of the circumstances in the country, but because the reception arrangements do not exist, or we cannot establish them in order to return them safely. As the consultation paper indicates, we are working very closely with social workers and local authorities to ensure that specialist care is in place and that communication with social workers is good. It is much improved; there have been problems in the past in that regard and that is why we are taking measures to address them.

Paul Rowen: Will the Minister give way?

Joan Ryan: I will give way in a moment. I understand that the hon. Gentleman wishes to say more on the matter.

It being One o’clock, The Chairman adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned till this day at half-past Four o’clock.